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Metro Vancouver refugees struggle to find affordable housing

Most spend half to three-quarters of their income on shelter

Ghulam and his wife Nazo (not pictured) moved from Afghanistan four months ago with their three children Mehmooda, 3, (L), Mehmood, 2, (R) and Ehsanullah (C). Recently, they had another addition join their family, daughter Laiba. The six of them are currently renting a basement suite in Surrey and is having a difficult time finding more suitable, affordable housing options.

Photograph by: Jenelle Schneider
, PNG

VANCOUVER -- Ghulam Hazrat and his family arrived in Vancouver from Kandahar a week before Christmas with little more than the clothes on their backs.

Hazrat’s wife was six months pregnant and the couple had three other children under the age of four who had difficulty understanding why the family left everything behind to start their life over in a strange, new land.

Settlement workers at Welcome House, where government-sponsored refugees are housed when they first arrive in B.C., helped the family apply for things like permanent resident cards and social insurance numbers. But one of Hazrat’s most daunting challenges: Finding a place big enough to house the family of six on a monthly income of $2,300 in an unfamiliar city notorious for its sky-high housing prices.

Hazrat initially set his sights on Burnaby, where there is an established Afghan community and he hoped his wife Nazo, who speaks no English, could make friends. But all the two-bedroom places he looked at cost well over $1,000 a month.

“Those who have income like us, it’s very hard for them to afford,” Hazrat said.

The family now lives in a two-bedroom basement suite in Surrey which costs under $1,000 a month. They have little in the way of furniture, paint and pencil crayon scribbles on the walls. There are cockroaches, spiders and the family keeps food staples in plastic containers so the mouse can’t get to them.

But by refugee standards, they are among the lucky ones. Hazrat, who speaks good English — a huge advantage for newcomers to Canada — was able to secure on-call work at a pizza parlour. The family lives a good distance from the nearest SkyTrain station, but is able to afford a car.

A study by immigration think-tank Metropolis B.C., citing Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation figures from 2006, found that 44 per cent of recent immigrant households in Metro Vancouver spent more than 30 per cent of their before-tax income to pay the median market rent in their area.

Immigrants who enter the country through the economic or family class streams tend to fare better in this regard than either government-sponsored refugees such as Hazrat, who are fleeing persecution and granted permanent residence before they arrive, or refugee claimants, who have asked to stay in Canada on humanitarian grounds. The latter two categories struggle because they tend to arrive with little and have less in the way of education and family support, the report noted.

Government-assisted refugees receive resettlement funding — comparable to what they would receive on welfare — from the federal government the first year they’re in Canada and social assistance from the province after that if necessary.

Of the 185 immigrants interviewed by Vancouver researchers, half of government-sponsored refugees spent between 51 and 75 per cent of their income on housing, as did 41.9 per cent of refugee claimants. This compares with 28.4 per cent of economic immigrants and 28.1 per cent of non-immigrants who spent that much on housing.

“That has ... a significant impact on issues of child poverty, on education, on their ability to meet their medical health needs,” said Chris Friesen, director of settlement services at the Immigrant Services Society of B.C., which operates Welcome House and is the first point of contact for the approximately 800 government-assisted refugees who arrive in B.C. each year. “When you’re paying 60 to 70 per cent of your monthly income just to ensure that you’ve got a roof over your head, it does not leave any significant disposable income to address even some of your basic needs.”

One of those needs is transportation, which eats up an increasing portion of the monthly budget as low-income immigrants are forced to look farther and farther from Vancouver in search of affordable housing, Friesen said, noting that refugees are increasingly settling in cities such as Langley, Maple Ridge, Pitt Meadows and Surrey.

This also hinders the integration process, as most of the outreach services for new immigrants are located in the city of Vancouver, Friesen said.

The Metropolis report, co-authored by Jenny Francis and Daniel Hiebert of the University of B.C.’s geography department and released in March, also found that refugees in Vancouver have a difficult time finding landlords who will rent to them, are more likely to live in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions and are particularly vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous landlords who take advantage of refugees’ lack of familiarity with Canadian law.

“Consequences of low incomes and substandard housing include increased feelings of stress, isolation, abandonment, hopelessness, trauma, and even depression,” the authors wrote.

“The stress of low incomes can exacerbate existing traumas for people coping with family separation and the challenges of integrating into a new culture.”

Hazrat’s oldest daughter, Mehmooda, who is three-and-a-half, still cries for her grandmother back in Afghanistan. She misses her extended family, her room and her toys, Hazrat explained as Mehmooda tucked herself into the crook of his arm, but her future will be more secure here.

Hazrat had to leave Afghanistan because his involvement with the Canadian government in the Kandahar region made him a target for attacks by Taliban insurgents. He first worked for the Canadian Forces as a project support officer, overseeing contractors who built infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and roads. He later worked as a political officer for the Department of Foreign Affairs, arranging meetings between Canadian personnel and tribal leaders, sometimes acting as a translator. Before working for the Canadians, he trained local government officials to use computers and had his own Internet café.

He now has a part-time, on-call position at Megabite Pizza in Port Coquitlam, working in the kitchen between 5 p.m. and midnight.

Hazrat and his wife had their fourth child, a baby girl, on April 1. His hopes for the future are modest: A job in his old field of IT, English classes for his wife and a family home that is not crawling with insects.

Ghulam and his wife Nazo (not pictured) moved from Afghanistan four months ago with their three children Mehmooda, 3, (L), Mehmood, 2, (R) and Ehsanullah (C). Recently, they had another addition join their family, daughter Laiba. The six of them are currently renting a basement suite in Surrey and is having a difficult time finding more suitable, affordable housing options.

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